“Then perhaps you can give him the message that his father and mother are awaiting his presence in the Great Hall. The feast in his honor has been going on for some hours.”
“Perhaps you can give him the message?” I said. “I…would hate to disturb them.”
He raised his brows. “All right.”
He knocked on the king’s door, and I heard my sister’s voice call sweetly, “Enter.” The general disappeared and reappeared a moment later. “They have said that they will come when they are ready.”
I did my best to hide my disappointment, and the general held out his arm to me.
“That doesn’t mean you should miss the feasts.”
I looked at the closed door and hesitated. If I left, Nefertiti would be angry. She would accuse me of abandoning her. But I had studied the same mosaics in the antechamber for hours and the sun had already set…
Rashly, I held out my arm, and the general smiled.
On a dais in the Great Hall were now four golden thrones. Beneath them a long table had been arranged where my mother and father were sitting; I could see them talking and eating with the viziers of the Elder’s court. The general brought me over to them, and I was aware of my aunt’s sharp eyes following us.
“Vizier Ay.” The general bowed politely. “The Lady Mutnodjmet has arrived.”
I felt a small thrill that he knew my name. My father stood, frowning over my shoulder to ask harshly, “This is well, but where is my other daughter?”
The general and I looked at each other.
“They said they would come when they were ready,” I replied. I could feel the burn in my cheeks, and someone at the table inhaled. It was Kiya.
“Thank you,” my father said, and the general disappeared.
I sat down and bowls of food appeared before me: roasted goose in garlic, barley beer, and honeyed lamb. Music was being played, and over the clatter of bowls it was difficult to hear what my parents were speaking of. But Kiya leaned across the table, and her voice was clear.
“She’s a fool if she thinks he’s going to forget me. Amunhotep adores me. He writes me poetry.” I thought of the psalms in Amunhotep’s chamber and wondered if they were his. “Pregnant in the first year, and I already know it’s going to be a son,” she gloated. “Amunhotep’s even picked out a name.”
I bit my tongue to keep from asking what it was, but I needn’t have done so.
“Tutankhamun,” she said. “Or maybe Nebnefer. Nebnefer, Prince of Egypt,” she imagined.
“And if it’s a girl?”
Kiya’s black eyes went wide. Rimmed in kohl, they looked three times their size. “A girl? Why would it be—” Her response was cut off by the sound of trumpets announcing my sister’s entrance. We all turned to see Nefertiti enter on Amunhotep’s arm. At once Kiya’s ladies began whispering, tossing glances in my direction, then in my sister’s.
From the dais, Queen Tiye asked her son sharply, “Shall we dance, now that the night is nearly over?”
Amunhotep looked to Nefertiti.
“Yes, let’s dance,” my sister said, and my aunt did not let her son’s deference go unnoticed.
Many of the guests would stay in their drunken stupor throughout the night and into the next, to be carried off in their litters when the sun rose. In the tiled hall leading to the royal chambers, I stood with my parents and shivered in the cold.
“You are shaking.” My mother frowned.
“Just tired,” I admitted. “We never had such late nights in Akhmim.”
My mother smiled wistfully. “Yes, many things will be different now.” Her eyes searched my face. “What happened then?”
“Amunhotep was with Nefertiti before the feasts. She went to him, and Nefertiti said he asked her to spend the night.”
My mother cupped my chin in her palm, seeing my unhappiness. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mutnodjmet. Your sister will only be a courtyard away.”
“I know. It’s just that I’ve never spent a night without her before.” My lip quivered, and I tried to steady it with my teeth.
“You can sleep in our chamber,” my mother offered.
I shook my head. I was thirteen years old. Not a child anymore. “No, I shall have to get used to it.”
“So Kiya will be displaced,” my mother remarked. “Panahesi will be angry.”
“Then he may be angry for many nights to come,” I said as Nefertiti and my father joined us.
“Take Nefertiti to your rooms,” my father instructed. “Merit is waiting.” He squeezed my sister’s shoulder to